UPDATED: And then the PR guy called me “a fucking bitch”. I can’t even make this shit up.

I know I just posted a few hours ago, but I’m posting again because you all know how dedicated I am to writing about PR pitches (both good and bad) and this one just can’t wait. I got a form letter email pitch (more than one, actually) about a Kardashian sister being spotted in pantyhose.

Actual line from email:

“The Kardashian’s once again show they are right on trend, and this is on (sic) Mommy’s are all going to want to follow.”

As I do with all unsolicited form-letters about celebrities-doing-shit-no-one-cares-about, I replied with my usual, simple response:

Hi there,
That wasn’t very nice. We send certain pitches out to people so they have the chance of getting more hits on their page. We’ll make note of this email in moving forward and remember if we have any advertising opportunities with any of our clients not to go through you.
Best of luck to you.
Best,
Erica

That sort of email might be threatening to a blogger who makes a living by getting advertisers who go through PR companies, but I’m not, and (as far as I know) neither are most people. For the most part, my blog is supported by people. People who are bloggers. This becomes relevant soon.

I wasn’t going to respond, as she did have a point, but then a VP of the company (Jose) hit “reply all”. With me on the reply-all.

Jose: “What a fucking bitch!”

Wow. I sort of felt bad for the guy (as I’ve accidentally fallen victim to the reply-all trap as well) and I considered just cowing down and remaining quietly chastened by this man, but then I remembered that this isn’t the 18th century and that I’ve never taken a high road in my entire life.

My response:

Hi. This is sort of why “reply all” doesn’t usually work well for
companies. Unless, of course, you decided that “What a fucking bitch” was
a great response from a public relations company. Personally, I preferred
the “Best of luck to you” one, which was much more honest and cutting,
while still being professional.

If you’ve read my blog you would know that a great deal of my blog deals
with the importance of public relations companies doing research before
sending form letters to bloggers. Specifically, I’m very vocal about
ridiculous pitches involving celebrities using products. So much so that
I made that actual Wil Wheaton collating paper page to combat this very
sort of thing in a quick and painless way. My blog has nothing to do with
fashion, the Kardashians or pantyhose…none of which I understand, to be
honest. Plus, you’ve sent me this form letter TWICE today. I only point
this out so you can delete this *ahem* “fucking bitch” from all of the
mailing lists you have me on, rather than just one.

Also, I apologize if you were offended by my email. Honestly, I’ve been
sending that thing out to PR people for the last year and this is the
first time I didn’t have someone respond with either a laugh, or with a
simple “No problem. We’ll remove you from the list.” In fact, many PR
companies have turned this entire thing around and sent really hysterical
exchanges to me, which I’ve used to promote their great work in
understanding (and working with) the unique personalities of the very
bloggers they’re trying to reach out to. Just a thought.

Hugs,
Jenny (aka “fucking bitch”)

I don’t know what I expected, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this:

Jose: I get it and I was out of line by saying that however you put way too much effort
into your approach. A simple “I don’t cover this, no thanks” or “Please remove”
would suffice. To go out of your way to be snarky and rude is a little
inappropriate. Again, I should’ve been less harsh – but I also feel like your email
was rude and unprofessional as well. We will do a better job to research who we are
pitching but maybe you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough
to be pitched at all instead of alienated PR firms and PR people – who are actually
the livelihood of any journalists business. Don’t be offended, you started the
cursing game so maybe we should all just laugh it off and plan not to work together
in the future.

Wow. Jose was sticking to his guns. Sadly for both of us, so was I.

My response:

“You should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough to be pitched at all.”
You sure know how to flatter a girl. Are you even in
public relations? Am I on Candid Camera? Because I’m kind of baffled.

Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy.

And then I tweeted to @BrandlinkComm to let them know that one of their VPs just sent me an email referring to me as “a fucking bitch.” And many, many of my 164,000 followers replied and retweeted in the most clever and hysterically awesome ways imaginable.

And it was beautiful.

PS. The reason I post this is not to have everyone go all angry-villager on the company. It’s to remind other bloggers that there are some amazing and wonderful PR companies out there who will do their research and will make your life wonderful. And there are other PR companies that will try to shame you into posting their irrelevant spam and threaten you with talk of not using you in the future for when they’re doing advertising. Those PR firms are assholes and you should probably question everything they say.

You are amazing. You are relevant. Your work is worth protecting and standing up for. And you will find wonderful PR companies to work with over time.

Even if you are “a fucking bitch.”

UPDATED: I love you people. Really. Thank you for always having my back and for being so supportive during this weirdness. Jose has apologized, and I’ve been assured by the woman in charge of the company that they are aware and are handling it the best way they know how, so let’s give them some air and let them have the chance to do that. *deep breath*

I’m cocking my head to one side and trying to imagine what it must be like to work in the most important PR company in the world – so important that they get to undertake the most Sacred and Holy task of schooling wayward, irrelevant bloggers.

They’re doing a service, you see. Thank goodness for people like them.

Um…are they serious? “You should consider yourself lucky”? Has Jose forgotten that they emailed YOU?!?! Classy, Jose. He should run for his life, you are going to go all Twitter-shame on him. If not you, your readers will!

They send out grammatically incorrect nonsense pitches, and YOU’RE the fucking bitch?

Honestly, I don’t get their tactics at all. You being a mother is just part of your blog, which means they just have crawlbots picking up “like MOTHER Teresa, only better” and the link to “Good MOM/Bad MOM” and somehow decided this was a mommy blog. Furthermore, what do the Kardashians have to do with mothers, anyway? And how did you “start the cursing game” by sending your Wil picture?

This guy is just pissed because he finally got caught using his office email to badmouth people, probably even his coworkers. He doesn’t understand blogging or women and thinks that we’re all aspiring to have Goodyear boobs. Then some “fucking bitch” who gave Christmas to those that had none and inspired others to do the same DARED to step out of the kitchen and question him. What a great PR guy – for douchebags.

Your Wil Wheaton collating page is seriously awesome and funny. And btw his cussing was WAY worse than yours. His was a direct attack against you and yours was more in general cursing. You are my hero anyway. Screw stupid PR firms.

I am all over this shit! Because I am an unconventional born again Christian Mommy who did not get your blog the first time I came here. Oh my gosh, they need to read more or they are missing the point!

XOXO Fuck that PR dude, he was all swish swish, no you DI’NT! But I don’t think he KNOWS WHO YOU ARE!!!

Does Jose even know what the letters ‘PR’ stand for? Unbelievable! I guess he’s not worried about good PR for his company. But they’ll probably be happy that you considered them relevant enough for a blog post.

Jenny, you are the most amazing person I “know” and it makes me wish I REALLY did “know” you in real life. And even though we’ve never personally met, I love you and you make my days brighter. Love, a fellow Texan 🙂

Of course. I can see that replying with a link to Wil Wheaton collating paper is equally as offensive and unprofessional as calling someone a fucking bitch. Congrats Jose. You win the logic award of the day. Your prize? A slew of annoyed bloggers. Yaaaaaayyyy!!!!

I admit, I would be flattered to get a PR pitch from someone- but let’s be honest, who actually cares about the Kardashians and pantyhose? (Oh, I suppose that’s why the PR agency was even sending out the pitch…)

I’d just like to say that Dogsondrugs provide an inferior brand of pitchfork. Buy from Honest Mike’s – “worlds sharpest tines – mega pitchforks”. As used by all of the Kardahsians and all other races in the Star Trek universe while wearing pantyhose. Get in quick. Our Taiwanese slave workers can only put out 200,000 per day….

I think the fact that Jose fail at PR. Is enough to stop us from going all mob on the company. I mean really the guy works for in PR send out an email to a blogger where he insults her and doesn’t automatically apologize?!?! He didn’t see this coming? Also the fact that he hit reply all, who is he sending this to in first place?

I worked in PR for many years and not even once internally, did I or my coworkers EVER called anyone who turned down our pitch, as a fucking bitch. Just.move.on. Jose clearly has a stick in his ass. Dickwads like him are exactly why so many good PR firms and practitioners are misunderstood.

It’s amazing that they don’t understand they are the equivalent of junk mail and telemarketers when they send those SPAM pitches. I hope he’s flattered that he made it into a Bloggess post – and he didn’t even have to collate.

Sounds like Jose doesn’t have a sense of humor. And he pretty much sucks at using Outlook. I know that we’re not supposed to go all angry villager on them, but I sent them a polite email suggesting that Jose should be retrained on email etiquette.

Anyone who can read and can receive your Wil Wheaton Collating email and not end up laughing hysterically with tears running down their face is a sociopath and should not be pursuing a career that involves the written word.

Cheezits. You can NOT convince me the economy is in the shitter when tools like Jose have jobs. Come ON! Speaking of fucking bitches, they never tried to solicit ME! WTF JOSE?! When your wrong, your wrong!

I got the exact same pitch today too. I blog about food. How do these people even get our email addresses, it’s so pathetic. I just clicked “delete” on the email but now I’m tempted to send them the same response you sent. In fact maybe all of us bloggers who got this pitch should send out the same response, just to tickle Jose.

Wow. It seems like every day the interwebs bring us a new example of PR/marketing/advertising people being rude/useless/incompetent. I promise: there are some good ones out there. And even some with a grasp of basic grammar.

Only because I spent most of my adult life in PR, OK, the “life” part is stretching it, and the “adult” part as well, must I ask with great gusto, nay, demand, that you marshal your global forces and get photos of:

– Ass Hat Erica
– Douche Canoe Jose

Then post the photos along with their contact details and any porn vids they have starred in. (Mr. Zuckerberg’s new privacy setting will make this dead easy).

During above mentioned payback, please don’t mention the slutcanoe k sisters by name, else Jose and Erica will include in their media infections, er, impressions.

Note: In Houston, a movie called “Erica the Slut” ran from when I was 13-16. Sadly, I never saw it, nor did I know that Erica moved laterally from porn into PR. The skills are certainly transportable.

Final thought. If you find the Rattlesnake, could you courier it to: Erica (“the PR Slut”) and Jose at Douche Canoe PR.

I really don’t understand why anyone would hit reply all and say “what a fucking bitch” It shows incredible unprofessionalism. I would never hire a company to do my PR work if I got an email like that or even heard they sent an email to someone that said that. But what do I know I’m just a regular consumer with a job and money. Seems like I won’t be buying pantyhose anytime soon.

Thing like this just boggle my mind. The thing that really bothers me is he still thinks it’s ok.

Oh! When I started to read this i thought Jose was talking to YOU about Erica. I almost felt badly for him, as well. But wow. This is about the funniest shit I have read in a while. Professional my eye. Seriously. I am curiious about the resoonse you get. Amazed at the stupidity of people, and in awe of how people just do not know how to spell or punctuate sentences.

A. I don’t comment often, but I have to say that what’s truly baffling here is that whoever wrote the original form has no grasp of the English language. How can they effectively relate publicly when they can’t spell or use an apostrophe?

2. Jose is a moron. Jose is a moron who likely will not have a job for very long.

C. Sorry, my number 2 really got me laughing. Poor, stupid Jose. I think I’ll take his response to the chair of the business department at my university so she can pin him on the “what not to do” part of the bulletin board in marketing class.

I can’t get over the fact that he’s VP of a Public Relations company and can’t use spell check. I mean, it does check grammar too. I don’t see why it’s so hard to insult someone properly. If you’re going to be an asshole, be an intellectual asshole.

From the Brandlink website:
“We come from the senior ranks of large firms, but here at Brandlink, we actually do the work, not just manage it. ”
“At Brandlink you get senior thinking, not just senior project management.”
Yeah, right, assclowns. Apparently you can’t manage your way out a a wet paper BAG. Senior thinking? Are you kidding me? THAT’S something to brag about? Asses.

I didn’t understand the “you started the cursing” part of this either at first (this is for the commenters (sp?) who also didn’t get that ). Then I clicked on Jenny’s link in this story that just says “And here’s a picture of Wil Wheaton collating.” THAT’S when it got even funnier and made sense. Still no excuse for his behavior, but at least now that statement made sense.

Is there a fax number where we, your loyal followers can send him something—-I don’t know what, maybe recycle all those unwanted spam faxes that flood the work fax machine and waste all the fax toner? I want to do something techno-stabby to Jose.

Best comment so far—Deidre’s about your having missed the opportunity to say “No way Jose.” Priceless!

WHOA!!!
Going to look through my emails – this sounds a lot like an email I got asking if I wanted high-res images of various celebs on scooters. The, “Mommy’s are all going to want to follow.” was the wording. OMG!
Really? Cause Moms get off on lame photos??
WTH??

So, in this guy’s profile on their website (copied and pasted below) something stood out to me – this guy is a total douche bag. Okay, maybe it doesn’t say that in his profile, but read between the lines. I also think they need to update his website profile – last line should say: “Most recently, Mr. Martinez called The Bloggess a fucking bitch, a new and innovative PR technique that Jose will soon patent in his climb up the ladder to his ultimate goal of wiping Donald Trump’s ass.”

Love you, Jenny – you rock!

Jose Martinez

VP, Media Director

Prior to BrandLink Communications, Martinez served as West Coast Vice President at Fingerprint Communications for over two years spearheading media relations on behalf of the agency’s LA-based clients. While at Fingerprint, Martinez worked on clients such as Muscle Milk, 42 Below Vodka, the Malibu Lumber Yard, W Hollywood Hotel, Eva Longoria’s BESO restaurant, Polaroid and Dr. Rey’s Shapewear and managed events for Maxim Magazine, Details Magazine, Rockband, and Oakley, to name a few. Before joining Fingerprint Communications, Martinez oversaw PR campaigns at London-based Freud Communications for Details Magazine, Soho House and The Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, Las Vegas. He also spearheaded special projects for Elle Magazine, Helio, Moet & Chandon and worked with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Marv Films, American Idol: Idol Gives Back and Bauer Publishing titles Life & Style and In Touch.

For reasons I can’t fully explain, I, for some reason, am repeatedly stunned by how fucking idiotic some people are. You would think this wouldn’t surprise me by now. But it does. Thanks for making it a fun surprise.

A simple “My Bad” on his part really could have saved him a lot of embarrassment. But since he insisted on going the douche bag route I am popping some popcorn and pulling up a seat. Can’t wait to see what comes next.

I used to work in PR and have several friends that still do consumer PR, regularly reaching out to bloggers like yourself. I am embarrassed for the entire profession for Jose’s behavior. The sad part of it is that there are several people out there who act just like Jose – they somehow think because they represent a company (or individual) that they are somehow important. As if the relevance transfers. I’m glad to hear that in the past you’ve dealt with good PR people too – sadly too many bloggers only get to interact with the worst of the profession which is why PR, in general, has such a bad reputation. And um, that apostrophe mistake? Makes me cringe. And get angry.

Oh my goodness.I cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, imagine how a PR person can get by with an attitude like that. And while I agree that reply all is a tool created to trap people, the very fact that he wrote such a message speaks volumes. I am not saying he can’t have an opinion—but one thing is to say something out loud, and another thing is to write it down. You rock for how you handled it— as always!

Well, I know I’M flattered to get mass-mailed PR pitches asking me to promote things, in exchange for high-res images (me) and actual money (the PR company)! I don’t know what YOUR problem is! It’s as if you don’t judge your self-worth in the currency of mindless anonymous mass promotion! Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be moving forward.

I just want to clarify that I am not the Erica who writes poorly-phrased and badly-composed replies for a PR company.
Also, I am not Jose, thank all the powers that be. I rather hope he accidentally strangles on a pair of Kardashian hosiery this evening.

Fuck yeah. It’s nice to see a post about these annoying PR emails. I received one today from a firm about “presidential neckties”. The email essentially said, “We notice that you’ve mentioned Obama in a post. Could you talk about this line of neckties?”

What!?!? Fuck you and your neckties.

I must admit, though…I received a note from a representative of another firm this week. Based upon her email, it was obvious that they had been following my site. They quoted numerous posts over the last few weeks, and used language that told me that they were readers. In a situation like that…I’m more than happy to take a few minutes and exchange a couple of emails back and forth. Otherwise, it’s the online equivalent of “cold calling”. I did that in my early twenties. Can’t stand those slimy eels.

Until now, I have simply deleted the emails as they have come into my inbox. Perhaps I should reply in the same fashion as you do. Maybe with a picture of Morgan Freeman holding cotton candy? Automatically deems negotiations null and void.

“Most recently, Mr. Martinez called The Bloggess a fucking bitch, a new and innovative PR technique that Jose will soon patent in his climb up the ladder to his ultimate goal of wiping Donald Trump’s ass.”

Sorry if this has been addressed BUT:
“maybe you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough
to be pitched at all instead of alienated PR firms and PR people – who are actually
the livelihood of any journalists business.”
I gotta be honest, as a journalist, PR people are NOT the livelihood of journalists.

Wow. I curse freely, and many in my office, including my bosses do as well. But there is a limit, and we do not put that into writing, and certainly do not hit reply all showcasing our unprofessionalism.

I’m shocked that someone in PR with a title like VP could be so wilfully ignorant and offensive. Dumbass deserves whatever slap on the wrist they give him for that. Something like that could get you fired where I work.

Wallaby (comment 99) is on to something genius. There are so many Jose jokes we have yet to make. Also, what an asshole. Dear PR professionals: You wonder why you have a bad reputation? I’d like to introduce you to Jose.

I can’t wait to hear more about this exchange! I hope Jose has to ACTUALLY apologize *smirk* and that you graciously share with all of us “Fucking Bitches”. I’d also like to point out that Fucking Bitch is capitalized. To prove a point. What’s the point you ask… well I’m not sure but it’s a good one 🙂

You are the best and you are relevant, but that PR company is not. How could they be in the business of pitching to bloggers and NOT know you?? Clearly they don’t know they market they are pitching to. What an incompetent group of idiots.

Sorry, but I am heading to Twitter to join the other angry villagers. How could I not? Way too much fun!

Here is what I am wondering: HOW ON EARTH is it possible to become VP of a marketing company when you do not have the spelling, grammar, and basic punctuation skills to write a single sentence? The number of errors in both the pitch and the email should be enough to mortify a fifth grader, let alone the VP of a marketing company.

Wow. I work in PR. Glad to know I now have a blueprint for how to climb the corporate ladder if I so choose. Thanks, Jose, for helping my career take off! I’m off now to reply all to some e-mails I got today. Maybe I can even use Urban Dictionary to really come up with some zingers.

I actually commend you on your restraint in not pointing out that neither of these “PR professionals” seems to understand the difference between a plural and a possessive noun. I probably would have responded by sending them to the Strunk and White for some much-needed grammatical instruction.

“PR firms and PR people – who are actually the livelihood of any journalists business”

Is it just me, or is that a very 20th-century view of journalism? In the modern world of free blogging, youtube and google-enabled research at everyone’s fingertips, aren’t people like this just a little pissed that they’re becoming a little obsolete?

You rock. I love that you wrote back and didn’t back down. I also love that you are sharing this with all of us because that is the beauty of this information age we live in. I get completely irrelevant form letter solicitations for my blog from companies that claim they love my blog but have obviously never read it’s actual content. This is perfect. I may just have to recommend that we all start sharing your link as well! : )

I was going to make fun of his bio, but someone already did that. I think he needs to install a “douche bag” jar in his office and promptly deposit a couple grand to be donated to homeless animals or something. They may have sort of forgotten that while you have 164k in followers, you regularly converse with people that have MILLIONS of followers. Oops.

Thankfully I didn’t get that Kardashian email as anything to do with them makes me insane and not in a good way. I’d take Wil collating over a K-girl any day.

That aside, regardless of the original “reply all” snafu, for Jose to keep trying to make you look like the rude one in all of this just shows his lack of professionalism. Self-important idiots like that just aren’t worth it, imho.

Has anyone helped the sweet girl from the original email file a lawsuit against JOSE for using the phrase, “fucking bitch,” in an inter-office email? Does she have to put up with that? Can she reply to all with, “Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Well you’re a cock sucking subway-pissing dick leak!”

Ya know, I come here every day. Sometimes, three or four times a day. Why? Because I am looking for pictures of a Kardashian in pantyhose. ANY Kardashian. Even that mystery one that never gets on TV (what’s her name? Gummo? Whatever.)

Thwarted again. Damn it! But it sounds like these Brandlink people have some. How do I get enough relevance for them to talk to me?

(Oh, I just looked Kim up on Wikipedia. She is involved in something called the Cookie Diet Lawsuit. How is that woman living my bucket list?)

I feel sorry for the folks who work with this tool. Who in their right mind sends that phrase in an email? In 2011? All I know is, I just got my very own Beyonce today, and that to me is more relevant than Jose will ever be. Love ya, Jenny!

Wow, Jose is an asshole! My jaw dropped when I read the following “you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant”. Geez aren’t you glad that your considered to be “someone” because your on their list.

Did anyone else notice that Brandlink’s twitter page truncates its profile? Not to mention the missing apostrophe — looks like that’s a recurring error. My 11th-grade English teacher would have something to say about that.

I know you didn’t want us to go all angry villager on him but gee, Jenny, don’t hate me for loving you. Please forgive me, Bloggess, but I was just feeling so stabby……..
Copy of email I just sent to his company with subject line of “No way Jose.”

Big mistake, Jose. Bloggess may as well read “Goddess” to so very many of us, her loyal followers. You should count yourself lucky to be found worthy of her even mentioning your name and company on her blog. I guess you’re counting on the old adage that even bad publicity is still free publicity. So sad. Good luck in your NEXT job.

P.S. There is a really cool feature on your computer called spell check that actually checks your grammar as well. Maybe it is time for you to learn to use it—like maybe when you find yourself updating your résumé.

REAL P.R. people know how to spell and use proper grammar. Assholes do not. I have to say, though, that I wish Erica had ended her message with the all-encompassing curt closure, “Good day to you. (I said GOOD DAY!)” Jose is a douche of the highest order.

Clearly he’s in the wrong (omg.. I send snarky remarks to our helpdesk in regards to emails but I NEVER use reply all.. however sometimes I worry that the helpdesk is going to send my response containing not only my helpful advise but my amusing curmudgeonly snark with THEIR response)
but yeah, I digress..

He must think awful highly of himself to assume that you got a copy of a picture of Wil Wheaton collating paper and constructed an email JUST FOR THEM. It’s a form letter, dude. It just happens to be a fucking hilarious form letter.

I’m watching the demonstration of relevance over on Twitter. The whole thing is just hilarious. Job well done. Maybe you should make this a weekly occurrence; pick some jackass on the internet (we’ve sure got enough of ’em), tell us why, and turn us loose. We’ve already purchased our pitchforks, after all.

Blame it on Mental Illness Week. Jose celebrated by skipping his meds and being his true (f@#$n a**hole) self. He must have Tourette Syndrome amongst other illnesses so let’s just send him a National Mental Illness Week card and forget this ever happened. Except no one will forget… we’ll just pretend to forget… or maybe we will because we’re fricken crazy!

I don’t tweet, but I hope that one of your loyal Twitter followers also tweeted this on all of Brandlink’s clients’ Twitter pages. Chances are, this asshole VP has similar unfiltered rants about his current clients. He’s a klassy guy.

When you put your responses in the grey boxes, I (and presumably others) can’t read it on the iPhone bc it cuts off the right side of the box. 😦 we just moved and don’t have Internet yet so I can’t even look up this post on a computer! When, oh when! am I going to get to read this post?!?! It looks like its really funny. Love you bloggess! Happy Mental Illness week!

Have you ever heard of a band called Saffire, The Uppity Blues Women? They had a song called “Bitch With a Bad Attitude.” It’s awesome. Until I found you, I thought they were the funniest women on earth. Anyway, in that song they say that bitch stands for “Being In Total Control of Herself.” They also proposed that the next time somebody calls you a bitch you should say “Thank you very much.” I’m just sayin’…….

I hope that Jose learned that when you feel forced into making an apology that you don’t believe in (and he clearly didn’t given the amount of justification and backpedaling that went into it), you should keep it short and sweet lest your pants actually catch on fire.

“you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough to be pitched at all instead of alienated PR firms and PR people” is especially hilarious to me seeing as how all I have to do is go to one trade show, sign up under “media” and suddenly I’m on at least 50 email lists (many from “PR companies”) about stuff we don’t cover…hmmmmmmm….

Two things:
1) “My blog has nothing to do with fashion, the Kardashians or pantyhose…none of which I understand, to be honest.” -I love this more than any boyfriend I’ve ever had. (And a few relatives.)

2) If anything, I feel sorry for Jose. He’s like that socially-awkward co-worker who’s trying to save face after the lame photoshopped image of his boss holding a penis fell into the wrong hands.

i fucking love how their twitter has 986 followers and you have 165,210 followers and growing (i swear it was 164K-something when i started this comment)! dumbass. maybe he needs to take the week off even though his problem is clearly stupidity and not mental illness…. i’d love to cut him (i thought of ending the sentence there, lol, but no, i won’t) a break and say he’ll learn from this but he doesn’t seem to want to learn. if he did, he’d’ve looked at your blog a little more closely before defending his stupid self.

For one nanosecond, I considered becoming a Twit solely for the purpose of re-twittering this whole shebang. However, I’m lazy and it’s just not worth the effort (though I’ll let my FB-Twit friends re-twit it). Amaaaazing act of douchbaggery. To be fair, anyone w/ an ego this big is capable of immeasurable harm to the human race. Maybe, by taking the wind out of his sails now, you’ve prevented Jose’s eventual, inevitable transformation into a modern day Hitler-Stalin-Paris Hilton-type person. Pretty much, YOU’VE SAVED THE WORLD by exposing his DB-ery. Well done, you.

Very enjoyable read, and good job on the viral tweet! I’d just like to point out that there were two apostrophe errors in this post. EG: It should be VPs not VP’s. I’m not trying to be a grammar nazi but I’ve noticed this over a few of your posts so far!

You know what amazes me? That there are PR people out there who HAVEN”T heard of you or Wil Wheaton collating and still send you pointless pitches. I would think by now that your legend – which is legion – should have spread far and wide. But that’s just my opinion. Stupid, stupid Jose.

“We well do a better job of who we are pitching.” Don’t you mean pitching TO? Otherwise, who ARE you pitching? Are you saying that you’re throwing someone? And also, is he saying that you should be clamoring to be pitched?

In my head, I imagine that “Erica” is probably a ditzy, young, gorgeous, single lady. Jose is a frustrated single guy, much older than Erica. In an attempt to woo her with his manliness, he is expressing his deepest emotions about how he wants to protect her from the big bad world, guard her, stick up for her when the big mean bloggess sends her a picture of Wil Wheaton collating. He does so by replying in his manliest voice, “that lady’s a fucking bitch”.
Then he goes into the men’s room for a few minutes. IfYaKnowWhatIMean…

I was SO offended just reading the subject of the pitch (which I received too) “Our Favorite Mommy! Kourtney Kardashian” – SERIOUSLY??? – Thank you for for not being bullied and tackling them. That guy?? what an A$$!

I think we should feel sorry for Erika and Jose. Her pantyhose were slipping down around her ankles, making her legs look like an elephant’s, and his are too tight. The crotch barely comes up to his knees, and it’s SO annoying. Forgive them, they know not who they insulted.

oh.my.gawd. did they actually take down the “our people” page and email links to employees?!?!?!?!? i seriously love that either they took it down so he’d stop getting angry pitchforks or they were too defunct to have a properly working page to begin with. what a fucking douche. pitch on!

“Don’t be offended, you started the cursing game” which REALLY says, “But but but, you started it, it’s not MY fault. I don’t know how to take blame for MY own actions….**Crying like a BABY because he’s in A LOT of trouble and got called on his bullshit!**”

Who the hell wants to know anything about Kourtney Kardashian? Yeah, I know there’s all those shows about this family, but I don’t get it. I think if you advertised her and her damn pantyhose I’d stop reading this blog.

Eek. I’m guessing Jose is sans employment. I was about to ask a really stupid question, but then I remembered that I’m on pain meds for this condition – don’t worry, it’s not contagious – and I decided it was too stupid to type, but by then I couldn’t even remember what it was in the first place, so I was like, Guess it doesn’t matter anyway. What. Am. I. Saying? *(fucking bitch)*

For some reason the letters are not coming up properly on my screen. However I still get the Essence of his doucheness (is that a word? Doucheiness? Hmmmmm….).
I’m feeling stubby on your behalf. Yell out if you need a spare pitchfork.

You’re my hero of the day. As is Wil Wheaton. I honestly don’t know why I don’t make time to read your blog every single day. I’ll add Google Reader to my phone and read your stuff in the john if I have to.

As a PR person, I have to say that I’m embarrassed for the profession when I hear these things! I’m so glad that you recognize we’re not all like that… in fact, many of us are bloggers or former journalists, producers, etc. and greatly respect our media contacts and value the relationships we have with all of you!

It’s not really an apology when Jose feels the need to qualify the hell out of it. He was WRONG, but he’s trying to punt this back on you because you made him look like an asshole in front of all his colleagues. Maybe dumbass Jose should be in a different line of work if this is how he deals with people with a legitimate question. I’m thinking his hostility needs a more appropriate outlet.

the devil made me do it. Here is a copy of submission on their contact page.

folks,

Your VP Jose cannot get away with calling The Bloggess at f**king bitch without stirring up a wee bit of controversy. So let me explain this to y’all in words easy for even PR people can unnerstand

Women who blog do so because they have something to say. Treating women who blog with disrespect is nothing more than a mirror held up to your own inadequacies, dick size notwithstanding.

Someone from your august organization might want to have a little sit down with Jose about use of the reply all button as well as his apparent disdain for anyone whose agenda does not dovetail with his. And if you are loathe to have this conversation, you may wish to call his mother. I’m sure she will be happy to explain it to him.

Jose – “Don’t be offended, you started the cursing game…” I would have pointed out that before you even responded with anything more than a pic of Wil Weaton he was the one who called you a “fucking bitch.” Both curse words if I remember correctly. And since I use them all the time, I do remember. He might want to learn what “first” means since he opened the door on cursing. To bad he won’t walk into said door.

As a PR person that DOES THE HOMEWORK… I’m offended at the initial pitch. Just did 50+ hours for a client making sure we pitched the RIGHT bloggers with the right tone. AND the reaction of Jose – – wondering if the PRSA Ethics committee would say on his handling?

You are a god send. I had someone do this to me this week, in a similar fashion threatening blah blah because I stood up for myself and I just walked away thinking he was a twat. I really REALLY wanted to say more, but it was too hard for my head. I now know what to do if it EVER happens again. I bow deeply from Australia x

As a newspaper’s managing editor let me just say pr people are not the fucking livelihood of journalists’ work. They are fucking pains in the ass that send out “our client’s too fucking cheap to buy an ad so run this shot no one cares about for free” and them they call 40 times because the first 39 hangups and hell no’s were too vague. Fucking douche bags. Vp of sucking something other than a pencil tip is all that jackass is.

But…can I still go all angry-villager on them? I kind of want to. My friends and I think you’re awesome. So much so, one time I sent you a still-drunk-the-next-morning-after-girls-night (where we got to talking about blogs, and eventually how I love you so) e-mail and you responded and it was kind of the best morning of my life. Minus hating life at work.

WOW. This is unbelievable. You can’t make this shit up. WHY did these people happen to you all the time? Do you have some kind of asshole magnet on you? Or as my good friend Elly told me about this term, you may just be a born Wrangler of Assholes… I LOVE the 1st comment. Indeed, an apology is not an apology when you try to “qualify” it. Now I am absolutely convinced: there is no need for me to learn more about Kim what’s her name. In all honesty, I still have no idea who she is and why we should care. Remember that picture that was shared around facebook about how a book died when you watch Jersey Shore? Well, to me this Kim whatshername and people that are associated with her kill human souls.

We do PR and marketing, and we send form letter emails. Not obnoxiously, we do.

If I ever got something that creative back from someone I would be laughing my ass of and probably trying to figure out how I could hire you in some way. For sure I would be hitting the subscribe button on your blog…like I will be oding right after I Finish this…lol.

Bravo. Kudos. And all those other kinds of pats of on the back for a “fucking bitch” like you.

Man, it’s sure is heartwarming to see the Twitter mentions go up. They seem to have someone on their FB page hitting the delete button a whole lot of times. I wonder if they’re going to get any overtime out of this.

Know what I like best about this, though? I’d never heard of this blog (er, sorry) until Wil Wheaton made mention of the sitch on Twitter. Thanks, Jose! You really do know how to bring people together.

Jose is dumber than a teenager kept in a basement for seventeen years — and I hope the same coddling, never-say-no, oh-so-privileged parents that raised him in such a way that they told him he was special, they always complimented him, and had him convinced that he was the Chosen One exception to everything, the parents that enabled him to become a human being that cannot possibly conceive that other human beings have worthwhile thoughts, feelings, and desires, I hope those parents die in a car accident, and I hope it is very painful, and I hope, for once, that Jose cries over something, and feels overwhelmingly horrible.

I was laughing so hard at this post [mainly because you write like I think]. As a Pro Blogger, it’s always amazing to me the lengths people will go to to tick us off. You would think the phrase ‘pro blogger’ in our bios on social media sites would be taken as a warning as much as anything else.

The best and most hilarious aspect of this is that the VP of the company is getting a practical lesson in the use of Social Media as a marketing tool. And really that should make the CEO of the company pay you. I mean, look at the wonderful advertising services you are rendering to them. Perhaps it’s time to throw together a bill and use that handy ‘reply-all’ button once again.

That’s why I don;t even waste my time responding to those ridiculous pitches. They are lucky you deemed them relevant enough to even hit send on the Will Wheaton collating page. Jose’s a fucking asshole!

Jose sounds like the fucking bitch. Tell him you are going to pretend he is an angry bird named Jose and slam him against every tree and building you can find. Then collate him. I am glad you contacted his company on twitter. Beside…who cares about a Kardashian in pantyhose. I could live without ever seeing a Kardashian.

Its been a Bad Day for poor Jose. He got up this morning and thought he was smart. And then he found out, its not exactly smart to call Jenny a fucking bitch. Cause she can make that into a title of pride and turn your little unknown PR firm into a vortex of bad PR.

Good on you Jenny! I do love it when people get called on pretending to know what is going on. He clearly never did research you, even after you responded to him and called him out on the research thing.

Well, really…you should be ashamed of yourself. They were obviously offering you a legitimate opportunity, which they determined would be in your best interest after carefully reading your blog. They are clearly the most heartfelt and sincere of all PR firms, and rather than thank them for choosing *you* (and I am sure, only you), you dared to reply with wit.

As a former PR professional… his response was beyond ridiculous. Honestly, I’m wondering what kind of company he works for if he’s a VP. There must be 3 people in the company – Him, the CEO, and the Assistant. I’ve never, EVER witnessed any reputable PR people using their work email to exchange profane-laden email messages.

I too am viewed as a fucking bitch by many, I AM SURE. I turn down lame requests for link exchanges with all sorts of places, I turn down affiliate program invitations because I know better and know that it’s pretty much free advertising for them, as is this press release shit. It brings more hits to your blog to post that crap? Really??? No way Jose.

heeeee.

No way Jose.
hehehehehe.
sorry. I’m 20 minutes into my Klonopin. I find a lot of things funny right now.

It was probably painful for them to see you tweet that to 164k followers. It will be much worse when they realize it was retweeted by Neil Gaiman to 1,400,000 followers! Yikes. That’s a bad day for a PR firm.

Researching the bloggers might be wise….. Don’t they know you have found a missing rattle snakes and you already have everything needed to ship a box or diseased Cobras? What kind of fool would mess with that?

This whole thing was hysterical, but I can’t get past the sad spelling of the PR company. “Kardashian’s” and “Mommy’s” ….those are plurals! Not possessives. On instead of one? Yikes. Call me nit-picky but…it’s a fuckin’ PR company! Learn some manners than go learn how to spell. hmph.

I love you because your response was awesome and spot on, but I love you even more because you used it to bolster us with words like amazing and relevant. That shit can make the difference to a blogger like me, between staying true to yourself or accepting the bullshit out of fear that the Man won’t come knocking on your door with fistfuls of dollars, Klout points and relevancy.

Considering how much WORSE your reply could have been to the original email (I think the Wil Wheaton page is quite harmless), I don’t see where the “Fucking bitch” comes in. The women in his life must be damn near sainthood if what you do qualifies for THAT type of name-calling.

I don’t usually indulge in schadenfreude, but I do kind of hope his poor manners and stupidity at LEAST result in a formal warning. Heh.

He went with the “you started it” argument? I’m impressed that he got the PR job in the first place, but I’m hoping they take the “reply all” button away from him, clearly he can’t even figure out that his argument was incorrect as well as juvenile. His retort makes me feel all stabby.

1. I work in PR and pitch bloggers. Please continue to call out turkeys like these as loudly as possible. They’re about as valuable to our industry as one-legged contestants in an ass-kicking contest.
2. Bloggers ARE the media. They’re more trusted and transparent than traditional outlets, and smart people (your readers) get it. Write on, sista friend.
3. WHO DOES THAT??? HOE-SAY … Can you see … that you should lose your job? What so proudly we hailed … oh, wait. That’s not how that goes.

Oh my god, I can’t believe what a total asshole The Bloggess is. Thanks for hosting this blog, Jose. We really needed a place where we could talk shit about Jenny Lawson without her being able to see it.

So, I was wondering if you changed the names but then I went and googled and there was Jose Martinez, 3rd one down on the Who We Are page of Brandlink Communications, VP, Media Director which I guess is a different title from the woman below him who is VP, Director of Media. Hmmmmmm. . . . . this company looks posh too, but then, the interwebs often make things look shinier than they actually are.

What I want to know is how some douche-y, unprofessional and unskilled dude can have a job that probably pays quite well and has also apparently done stuff for all those great places (as listed in his profile). Who the hell does the hiring for firms like this? Does his daddy own the company or something? I’d bet there’s a helluva lot of unemployed people out there who’d do a damn sight better than this Jose guy.

All I can say is WOW! I love you Jenny. I was a victim of the “reply all” when I said “damn, she is like a dog with a bone”… resulting in meetings of me, my boss… the “dog” her boss and the boss’ boss… I won the battle, but it took a long time to win back my position with the big boss… but it was SO worth it! PR companies suck and I am sick of the cardashians… or whatever their names are!

The Kardashians wear pantyhose? Oh yeah, just saw this tweet by Jose to Wil Wheton:
“I was defending you! If you knew the whole story”.
Umm. The whole story? You mean the one posted here. That’s pretty much whole story for you.
Douchebag.
Pantyhose.

Good for you!
Just today, I posed the question on my FB page if I am being unreasonable for asking something in return for posting shit on my blog for *brands* or companies…more and more they are asking me to do that – for nothing in return. I only got two responses…I’m not terribly relevant it appears…but at least they both agreed with me! 🙂 This post solidifies that fact that yep…I was right!
xxoo

Oh my. I hope he’s learned a very big lesson from this one. He sure didn’t realize who he was dealing with.

And on a more serious note, can I say big “Thank You” for taking such an important stand with PR companies and doing it in the most hilarious way so that we can all laugh and laugh and then laugh some more. Only you can get away with all that you say… and for those of us that only wish we could say it, we thank you.

Now that Wil Wheaton and Neil Gaiman jumped on board, that’s how many MILLIONS of people reading this? GREAT STUFF! And Jose is trying to defend himself from his twitter…and then he’s thanking GOD for being blessed, and saying TGIF even thou it’s still Thursday in his timezone. I think he is getting dumber by the minute.

I haven’t been called a bitch yet, but I’ve had a PR who told me I HAD to cover what he sent me and he kept getting increasingly annoying about it. Maybe if I hadn’t blocked him, I could have eventually made bitch status. I don’t understand these PR people. Is it that easy to get a job in PR that you can resort to playground antics? Maybe that’s how they got the job, “I’m going to hold my breath until you give me the job.” I know some professional PR people and it doesn’t seem like they had it that easy. They’re all well educated, well spoken people. Most of my friends work in real life capacities, not with blogger or Internet relations, but why would anyone even hire a lower caliber of person to promote their company?

I’m not encouraging anyone to write to Jose or, better yet, his superior…oh, wait. I am. You should email them. Because he’s a total professional and calling someone a “fucking bitch” isn’t shitty and misogynistic at all.

Jenny only you could get me to tweet obscenities – but how could I change that title?

I walked away to have dinner and came back to find you had gone viral again. Not surprising that Wil has the sense of humor to see why your response is funny and to share it.

Also not surprising that someone at @Brandlinkcomm thinks it was *technology* that bit Jose in the ass and not a) poor business practices, b) the inability to apologize properly, c) the tendency toward biting the hand that *really* feeds you, or d) the lack of decent writing skills. Yeaaaah.. That wasn’t technology that bit them in the ass, it was hubris. (Pausing while Jose and Erica go look that term up.)

I don’t doubt that Jose will retain his job – he will. It’s not like his employers don’t know about his arrogance or will be surprised by his swearing (as if this were the first time.) They will blame the technology and “uppity bloggers” who don’t want to earn money for their PR firm while being treated as if that were an honor.

The good news though is that someone *with* a clue, working in PR in L.A. will be smart enough to point this out to the Kardashians. No matter what I do or don’t think of them or pantyhose? They’ve never struck me as stupid enough to stay with the moron who mishandled this SEO & PR nightmare. Good on you, savvy PR firm that steals away the Kardashians and pantyhose! Now just *don’t* make the same mistake of underestimating the exposure of the blogger you are trying to get to promote your client’s brand.

Thank you for no taking the high road. This guy needed to learn his lesson, sure hoping that Jose loses his job over this. I don’t care what business you’re in, what the customer did, how much they may have provoked you. “Fucking bitch” is NEVER an appropriate answer. Ever. Well done!

omg, you made me laugh – what an achievement with the week i’ve been having!
I, too, thought at the very beginning that Jose’d been referring to *Erica* and accidentally included everyone…. hahahehe!
Thank you for your response – thank you for sharing. Like button isn’t strong enough…

Surely @brandlinkjose’s Twitter account can’t be real. Can it? CAN IT? Oh my goodness. If he’s the VP I’m going to apply for Empress of Brandlink- I’m definitely qualified. For one thing, I have a firm grasp of the conventions of written language.

Dude. You are awesome. Tip of the hat to you for keeping a cool head. And this Jose is way out of line if he thinks PR people are a journalist’s livelihood. I’m a “real” journalist, and I assure you, I throw most PR emails I get in the trash. I don’t need the news manufactured for me, thanks. And his PR company really need to learn how to write emails before sending. “on (sic) Mommy’s?” Really? Does a first grader own that company?

I like the picture of Wil Wheaton collating. Sounds to me like Jose is one of those people who just CANNOT apologize or acknowledge that he did something wrong. I live with one of those, the only way to deal with them is to tell them to fuck off.

I was really hoping to meet a guy with a really big pitchfork at the angry villager’s social and after party. Can we please still have it? I’m in need of new friends; the last ones were run out of town on a rail.

Wow! By the time I get through all the comments ahead of me I almost forget what the original post was about 😉

Of all the comments I read (I only got about half way down) I really connected with:
Desertbell
Internets, meet Jose. Jose, meet the Internets.
Do not make the Internets angry.
You would not like us when we’re angry.

“…maybe you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough
to be pitched at all instead of alienated PR firms and PR people – who are actually
the livelihood of any journalists business.”

Beyond the bad attitude and horrible treatment meted out to The Bloggess here, I see a couple of errors, both in the next to last word. First of all, there should be an apostrophe between the t and the s. Also, the entire word should be in quotes. Because no true journalist actually depends on PR folks for their livelihood, no matter how much PR folks may want to tell themselves that. They depend on PR folks for finding something to fill in the extra nooks and crannies left in the day’s news hole after they’ve put in as much actual news, found through their own hard work and cultivated sources. Also, even if said reporter is working to fill in the gaps and going to PR folks for help, they don’t get to call themselves an actual journalist if they’re actually responding to pitches that involve what sort of leg coverings reality TV starlets are wearing.

A couple of things… from now on it’s simple… use the line my old rowing partner and favorite party girl used back in the day… “Do you know who I am?” And just leave it at that. Because clearly they don’t.

Secondly, I am considering myself super lucky now that I have a piddly shit little teeny tiny insignificant blog so that I don’t ever have to deal with asinine crap like that. The grammatical errors in the initial contact alone are like nails on a blackboard… and name-dropping “Kardashian” makes me want to vomit.

really Jose? You posted AGAIN? (#286 & #389) And you didn’t have anyone check your spelling or grammar before hitting “send”? And you boasted having as many as FOUR of your 1000 clients back you? And it’s OK for you to send irrelevant e-mail pitches, wasting the time of countless people but receiving one humorous response wasted YOUR time? Your mother must be so proud. Since you can’t apologize worth beans, you need to just shut-up. Seriously. You have been humiliated and outclassed.

This is just fantastic. Instead of offering a simple apology Jose keeps digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole. I love seeing stupid people like Jose fail epically. As an added bonus now there are thousands of bloggers who will completely dismiss anything Brand Link emails them. Thanks for making my night.

PLEASE keep us informed of any more “dialogue” you might have from Jose. I am SO hoping this blog post goes viral and then Jose will have to PR his way out of huge shit storm that he created. Keep the pressure up in this guy and we will soon see who is *relevant* and who is not.

The only thing that’s coming to mind is – “BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE.” Jenny, as a PR pro myself, I have no fathomable idea why someone would behave this way. Insane. You were SO right to respond the way you did.

We appear to have destroyed Twitter. Pretty big accomplishment for an irrelevant blogger and her nonexistent followers because she refuses to blog about drivel.

Also, I’m really hoping that “Jose” here is a joke. Because making illiterate asshat comments and then LINKING YOUR EMPLOYER’S WEBSITE TO SAID COMMENTS is beyond stupid. If they didn’t get the infamous email, they can now receive physical evidence of your rude-assed incoherent attitude.

I’ve attempted to ponder an explanation that Jose may offer up to his employer when questioned on his written reaction:
1) diarrhea of the digits …. an uncontrollable urge to type shit;
2) someone peed in his breakfast cereal;
3) his frontal lobe was damaged after his head stuck a urinal, when he was rise from a kneeled position;
4) he is a misogynist who’s mother made him wear dresses in the house; and finally
5) he is a self-loathing, POS, without any means by which to relieve his frustration other than a garage sale vacuum cleaner and a jar of dollar store petroleum jelly!

If that’s even Jose and if he really got 4 people supporting him, then I think the score is 4 for him and… let’s see… Um, Twitter is down (did we bring it down knocking the PR firm?)… but from memory Jenny has about 160,000 followers and Wil Wheaton has over 1.8 million.

Even if we assume that all of Jenny’s followers are included in Wil’s, that’s 4 for Jose and nearly 2 million for Jenny. Is that score close enough for you Jose?

Good grief! I spotted more typos and grammatical errors in my post than were present in Jose’s email…. Damn iPad and autocorrect! Smart technology is sometimes not smart… Or I wasn’t paying attention….. Or it’s Jose’s fault for pissing me off!

Wow, I had no idea how lucky I was to be “relevant” enough to receive their Kardashian fashion updates several times a day too! I feel so special now.
Yeah, not really.
If they had an unsubscribe link on their crappy spam they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. I totally plan to send an email demanding they unsubscribe me. I might sign it “fucking bitch.”

Apparently nobody ever told Jose not to e-mail anything he wouldn’t want his mother to read. I say that to my boys all. the. time. Maybe I’ll have my kids read this post in the name of digital citizenship. Thanks Jenny.

Wow! Jose had FOUR whole clients call him!!! FOUR!!!!
Forget your 165k+++ followers (many of whom retweeted) and Wil’s gazillion followers (who also retweeted), Jose had FOUR clients call! What’s a million or so unimpressed consumers to his FOUR clients?!?

GOD!

P.S. I teach Business Etiquette in my Business Communications class. May I use this as an example of really fucking stupid behaviour by a “professional”?

My wife and I agree about something. Twitter dies under the strain of the BrandLinkComm issue and Jenny’s site chugs along with no discernible issues. I think Twitter needs to contact Jenny’s web hosting company for some stability advice. 😉

As I was reading this I felt like this might have been the Jose I used to work with on a launch event back when I did PR. Sounded like the kinda guy I recalled getting annoyed with when he wouldn’t do the work and then blame poor results on others. After a bit of digging turns out I know EXACTLY who he is! Have to say it feels SO good that he FINALLY got what he deserved! Wouldn’t be surprised if his name mysteriously disappears from the companies website next week. 😉

Poor Jose. He probably meant that ‘Klone’ Kardashian was a fucking bitch for trying to bring back pantyhose. He probably had a raging yeast infection and can’t bear to go through that again. But once you called him out on it, he couldn’t turn on his own client, so he had to pretend he meant you. Or maybe he meant Erica. She is, after all, the one who said “that’s not nice” about you sending a picture of Wil collating papers. So he WAS defending Wil.
Jose, as my dad was known for saying, “boy you really stepped on your dick this time!”

This is to funny. I LOVE the “you should be flattered” thing. They make it seem that they actually look at the blogs to see if they think they are deserving of the PR attention….I haven’t been blogging for a while. My site is still up so that my readers could grab all the recipes on it, but I removed all contact info. I STILL get these PR pitches although it clearly states on my FRONT PAGE that I am no longer blogging. Not only do they still send these pitches, but they got a hold of a private email address and send them there to! Now, I might like to pretend that I was so GREAT that they still think I’m deserving of their attention, but in reality, they are just sending the same email to anyone who ever post anything anywhere LOL.

Somebody said exactly what I was thinking: Jose is forever going to be famous because he will become a verb. “Wow, you totally pulled a Jose!”

Also, I have had a defunct blog for months and months and months and I *still* get occasional form letters like the one you received. Kinda blows the “relevant enough to be pitched at” argument right out of the water 🙂

I’m just impressed you resisted the urge to correct all their ridiculous grammar issues in your responses to them. I think there would have come a point I would have just sent them a redlined copy of their email(s) with proofreading marks. Dipshit moron weirdos.

You are hilarious! Okay, I don’t want to sound like I don’t know what is going on but who the heck is Wil Wheaton and why is he collating?!? I just started reading your blog so I might be a little behind.

Congratulations Jenny for starting a Twitter war, which is a much better kind of war than any other. Also, I am claiming the title of “fucking bitch” for the weekend, because I’m prepping for surgery on Mon. by drinking only clear liquids – three days of that. Please tell Jose. As a former English teacher, I would be happy to engage him in email grammar lessons. That is all.

From their Social Media & Viral Marketing services:
“We have also been instrumental in creating unique viral videos, as well as mobile device applications which we distribute through a network of tastemakers, ensuring that the content reaches as wide an audience as possible, thus elevating the profile of a client’s brand and products.”

What’s more viral among bloggers and their followers than being a douche canoe to The Bloggess! William Fucking Shatner couldn’t handle it!

I think being a fucking bitch in these situations is so important to showing the blogging world that we all shouldn’t be cookie cutter blogs to please douchebag PR firms that don’t value us or take the time to research what we do.

too funny; and reminds me of 9-12-2011; the 5th annual “Cock Gobbler Day” where we celebrate the anniversary of the day; five years ago; that one of our principles called a customers employee; wait for it…”a Cock Gobbler” – classic!

I think Jose must work for one of the banks I am dealing with – that is about what I am getting from them – thanks for the chuckle, the laugh out loud that my family looked at me like I had lost my mind and most of all – for sticking to your guns – you make me proud to be in good company “another fucking bitch”

This was like a “How to Fail at PR’ demonstration. With so many things wrong with it I chose to focus on the abuse of apostrophes and sent them The Oatmeal’s excellent guide http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

Thank goodness you are a fucking bitch, because it makes this blog so funny!

I can’t believe you didn’t point out to Jose how crappy their work is. If they’re going to cover D-List celebrities and the stupid panty hose they wear, they should at least provide an error-free press release. My g_d, the friggin thing was short but had grammatical errors on top of the typo. They should be embarrassed.

Really!

Jose’s conduct was not professional at all. He should take his poor writing skills and just find another profession. Like teaching emailing techniques.

PR Guys are like Politicians, Self Serving Arrogant assholes who really DGAF about what the general public need or want.

The best kind of PR is normally that done by the individual like the two London Indians I saw years ago before the internet, digital cameras or mobile phones. They were standing by their PLUMBERS van, in turbans, with the logo on it: “YOU’VE CALLED OUT THE COWBOYS, NOW TRY THE INDIANS”

Just stumbled upon your blog through a Twitter RT and am laughing my ass off at this post along with the collating post. How is it I have not heard of you? How is this possible. Too funny! A new reader.

Bloggess followers tweet & retweet & facebook
(slow clap)
Retweeted by Will Wheaton, King of all Geeks
(clapping builds)
Retweeted by Neil Gaiman, King of All of the Things
(cue standing O)
Retweeted by John Scalzi, Lord of the Nerds
(syncronized foot stomping)
Instant viral sensation? Priceless
Because it’s not just who you are, it’s who you know. Isn’t networking, like, PR or something?

I kinda shot this to a contact of mine over at PR Weekly. Shit? If you can see the fan for the other shit that’s already accumulated on the fan, I would like to let you know you are cleared to hit the fan.

Just. WOW.
My iPhone used 11% battery life to scroll through the comments!
What an asshat.
I must say most of the PR pitches I’ve gotten are good and I’ve even used a few. But I’d never use that firm. So unprofessional.
I’m now heading to twitter to read the shitstorm there!

Jenny,
The previous commenters have said everything else so well. Thank you for the P.S. in your post. As one of the many, many tiny bloggers who receives annoying, offtopic, and often borderline rude PR emails weekly (along with the follow-up, vaguely threatening “why haven’t you replied?” emails) I appreciate you taking the tiime to call out bad PR practices. Hopefully, some of the firms will listen and care.

Go Jenny! “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” … and we only get better with age! Ha! Hope to still be reading you when you’re my age! You’ll probably still be blogging, but do you think Jose will still be in PR?

Oh, goodness. I’m so sorry, and I hate to disappoint everyone, but that’s not Wil Wheaton. That’s my cousin, Neal Wheaton. He works for us at our family business, although really, we keep him at the office, only to keep him out of trouble elsewhere. He sometimes gets in trouble.

And he’s not collating, he’s ‘counting.’ Counting the number of sides to that stack of papers. He likes to do that. Besides, he’s not allowed to collate. Not any more.

I don’t know how he got himself into this mess, and caused all this trouble.

You have made my morning. I get emails every day from inept PRs trying to get me to advertise/promote my competitors etc. I think if I ever have to have a lobotomy my next career move will be into PR …

You just keep firing right through their greedy hearts Jenny. There are many of us [elbow to elbow] out here doing our very best to give the Wii advert wankers, the right proper shellacking their flabby asses need. Oh hi acid-tongued angel… press on toward our infinite spank!

I was going to go to sleep hours ago, until I read this post and the flood of comments. If this PR Company has an HR department worth anything at all then Jose should, and most likely will lose his job. And justifiably so! His conduct is so unprofessional, even without hitting the “Reply to all” button, in any workplace.

Jenny, you put an enormous smile on my face, and fill me with belly laughs every single time I visit your site. Keep up the great work!!!

The best line from that entire exchange was unquestionable, IMHO, “Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy.” And then you broke Twitter. HAHA!!!

Just FYI…After the shit-storm started I got a (sort-of) apology from Jose. Not posting it here because I think it will just add to the massacre, but he’s free to leave it in the comments. His boss, however, apologized and is looking into the situation. I’m not sure if she’ll be able to give us any details due to confidentiality issues, but it’s nice that someone is actually taking it seriously.

Now if we could find a way to make change happen this quickly for everyone who doesn’t have a great platform and a dark, but fabulous army waiting to right wrongs…

PS. In the interest of fairness, I have no idea if the person posting here as Jose really is Jose or if it’s someone pretending to be him. I’d take it with a grain of salt.

Not only did you demonstrate your relevancy, you let this be a lesson for soooooo many other PR companies and their bcc generic messages. I am sure, quite so, that THIS incident right here will become a teachable lesson on so many fronts…

Wow this will be in PR text books. LOL Right under the relevance of bloggers chapter in the cautionary tale section. I almost feel bad for the guy. An apology will not undo it.
It might have been better if he said, oh damn, my bad. I pressed reply all on accident but to go on defending your actions is baffeling.
As a form of damage control they should just set everything ablaze and start all over

So this is what you get up to while I’m at work. And then I don’t know about it until I get home and it’s all over. You really need to DM me on Twitter if you are going to start a virtual lynching. You know. So I can join in.

OMG! You are AMAZBALLS! My brain is exploding from all of the awesome coming off this page.

A company that can not 1. show common curtesy and 2. Takes themselves too seriously are not worth your time and energy. I work in finance and the majority of my time is spent in customer contact. If I received your reply email I would have laugh myself sick then called all the girls around to laugh some more. We would declare you hilarious and would foster a client relationship built on mutual humour. Not call you names and DEFINATELY not send the responses you received. My boss would kick my butt!

So I spent most of today (technically yesterday but I don’t count it until I sleep) being weepy for no goddamned reason except that I suspect the nurse put something in my flu shot– either that or all the dead flu viruses they stuck in me were pregnant and now I’m having pregnant-flu-hormone reactions — and basically I just wanted to be curled up in bed and trying to think as little as possible when a friend directed me to your blog. I’m still crying now but it’s from laughing so I’m calling this a win. Thanks!

If you are a “fucking bitch” for that, I would hate to see how many women he demeans on a regular basis. I would also love to see who he categorizes with the c-word, the misogynist’s best friend. Yeesh.

Despite the epic gongshow Jose spurred on, I’m almost more distressed by his tweet that it’s “ironic” that today is the day he suffers from a sudden awareness or what technology does. How is this ironic? Was he a very close, personal and relevant friend of Steve Jobs? Is this the anniversary of his purchasing a computer? Was today the very first time he posted his own tweet? His grammatical errors, lack of worthwhile content, wildly inflated sense of self-worth and general lack of class are tremendously disappointing: however, for some reason it is that one incorrect usage of the word “ironic” that’s bothering me the most. (Granted, I wasn’t the one accidentally forwarded such a delightful email. If I had been the recipient I would definitely have more relevant and important things on my mind, like the Kardashians’ pantyhose situation or whatever spectacular situation they decided you were worthy of being pitched).
Doesn’t Jose know it’s not polite to be so obviously idiotic when you’re tying to enjoy a nice, relaxing Mental Health Week? So disrespectful.

YOU’RE the woman with the hot off the press will Wheaton collating photo! Sending it to him was like shoving it in his face that you can get more hard hitting and PR appealling photos than he can. He’s taken one look at the photo, burst into tears that he is in fact a crap PR person and then defaulted to evil words as a way of deflecting his pain. Poor him, he can’t help being so crap.

Jenny,
Too bad Erica, Jose and their most excellent PR firm (what is that name again?) couldn’t help you get more hits on your page. I don’t think you need her luck. Sadly, though, more people have visited the BrandLink website and twitter account today than I’m certain, EVER before.

Thank you for helping me with my #FF. I was struggling. It won’t include @brandlinkJose @brandlinkcomm any Kardashian with or without pantyhose (it’s not their fault, but no). I will proudly suggest #FF to @TheBloggess @wilw @neilhimself.

Ok, 1) Wow, I swear the shit that happens when I sleep, just amazing. 2)I really kinda wish I knew how twitter worked so I could see the shit storm. I can’t find any of it when I clicked on the link for the PR’s twitter page. I see like, 1 post seemingly related. Bah. At least I can swim through the comments here to enjoy some of it.

Hi there, long time lurker first time post-er. I love this post because it shows how people in either a positions of authority (Pres, VP etc.) or in the celebrity world think they are so much better than the rest of us little people. It’s like Mr. VP thought you should LOVE his form letter because he was giving you access to the ever so secret world of the Kardashian’s. What he fails to remember is that his company generated that form letter to pimp out their clients to the rest of the known world.
It’s really kind of sad that millionaires need pimps these days but I guess that is part of the price of fame. Oh wait, there are people who don’t give a shit and don’t WANT the masses to know they took a crap today? Astonishing.
What a bastard.
See I could have said – fucking bastard- but I would hate for people to think I am in PR.

Really?! Really?! This dude needs to be visited by a group of psychotic sock monkeys with sharp instruments sewn to their little cloth hands. What a total d-bag! Please, oh please tell me Jose got fired and is now living in the same box he used to clean out his cubicle.

«Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy.» Priceless! I’ve stumbled upon this entry via Twitter and of course RT’d it myself. I’ll share it on Google Plus to my 2000+ followers when I find the time later today. Oh, and I’m sitting in Germany BTW, so this PR debacle is officially an international one. 😀

Awesome.
This is a PR firm that did no research, they should have owned that from the start.
Several of us mommy bloggers in NYC share invites and it is amazing who gets what and how unrelated pitches are to blogs.
We, with you at the lead, are changing this!
Yay!
Mitch

Wow. It’s Friday and there were two Bloggess posts waiting. 😀 Do you think Jose ever expected that responding like he did might lead to his last day at work? I can’t imagine in this economy that he’s going to find another job anytime soon, especially if he applies with a PR firm who can Google his name and find this. They’d have to be beyond morons to hire him. Well, unless he applies for a janitor job. Dude has no brains! I do hope they make him grovel and apologize profusely before canning his sorry butt! Then again, they sound like a place that is enjoying all the negative PR from this. Stupid jerk will probably get a promotion out of this. That’s just sad.

I am SO tired of being sent info to throw up on my blog. And I’m tired of publicists not knowing what I write about before sending me stuff to throw up on my blog like I have no editorial considerations.

Anyway, I never heard back from Erica or Lauren but I’m quite sure I was called a “bitch” somewhere, either verbally or elsewhere.

@ Jose (comment 289)…. Did you really wake up yesterday hoping to become the the Mel Gibbson of PR? Newsflash…no one will care or remember you in a day or two. However, we will all still be reading The Bloggess…. Time to crawl back under your rock.

This is why I need a life re-do. I went to bed laughing while I followed the email war w/comments and woke up wanting to know how it was progressing. Did you know that Neil Gaimon retweeted the link?…yea…in my book that was the ‘Game.Over.’ for dear, misguided Jose.

Way to Rock a Thursday night (and now Friday morning) Jenny!!! Love you!

Becky, you say, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?” and it sounds right. Heck, it’s been, what, a hundred and fifty years or so since Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about” and you’d think it was as true now as it was then.

Except for one little thing: this may or may not be true, but I understand a happy customer tells an average of six people about their experience while an unhappy customer tells an average of thirteen (which may be the origin of triskaidekaphobia).

But this is a PR firm. In other words they thrive on attention, good or bad. So, yeah, for them any publicity is good publicity, even if the publicity they’re getting makes their employees look like semi-literate jerks.

Sounds like we both get the most irrelevant pitches ever. The other day a PR person named “Dj hardy” emailed to asked me if I covered condoms on my…wait for it…beauty blog. Really Mr. HARDY? You just answered your own question. I’m so tired of the people who don’t read the About Me page first…or even my contact page that says what I cover. (Ps. his name and relationship to condoms was not lost on me.)

Thanks for making this public so that PR firms understand that most of us don’t give a shit about which celebrity was caught eating a pizza, but we do give a shit about being pitched appropriately.

An very similar thing happened to me in March. This post was also cross-posted on Ragan.com were I am a contributor and guess what? I got a lot of criticism from other PR people who thought I was much to hard on these spammers! PR people need to learn how to stand up to bad PR! That is the only way to save the profession in the long run. Thanks for the great post and the laughs.. Claire

Seriously, as a new blogger, reading this gave me chills. Thank you! Jose OBVIOUSLY didn’t do his research and completely missed the bar when it comes to “relevancy.” He doesn’t understand the social media world we operate in and, well, just got SERVED.

I was feeling a bit stabby myself, but instead decided to use this post for EDUCATIONAL purposes and encouraged my professor pal to include it in today’s college JOU/PR lecture as a case study on how NOT to approach a popular blogger. Heh heh.

OMG, that is a different world. I run a charity in Africa and never read things like this but I was hooked. What a dumb-ass, didn’t the dude know you have hundreds of thousands of followers? –wow Anyhow, this is not super relevant to my work but it was fun to read, glad you shared, :).

oh the stupidity of some people! I’m sure by now, well over 2 million people have seen or retweeted. if he’d just taken the time to get to know you… typical fail on a “I’m better than you” PR company’s part.

Didn’t have time to read the other 600+ comments, so please forgive me if it’s been mentioned, Jose’s “apology” reminded me a bit of Judith Grigg’s “you’re lucky I even gave you credit rather than stealing your work outright” response to an author’s objection to having her article used without permission.

It really seems like there are so very many PR people bombarding bloggers with junk mail that they should expect some people to get fed up and be a smart ass about it. Nobody likes getting spammed.

1) obviously these folks haven’t read your blog. ever.
2) i don’t think you are any kind of bitch. your blog has been a great help to me. i was recently diagnosed with depression but due to finances, was unable to get the help i needed. during this time of limbo, there were days when the only time i smiled or laughed was when i read about your shenanagins. my husband would always say, “are you reading that blog again? it’s good to hear you laugh.” so if being a “fucking bitch” means that you helped me when i was lost in the fog, then god bless you: i dub thee HRH Fucking Bitch. i’d give you a tiara but i don’t have one to spare. thank you for your gift; it means more than i could ever say.

p.s. i recently was able to recieve help in managing my depression. i’m not out of the woods yet but at least i’m on the path.

Coming back again this morning just to read these comments. I wish there was a like/share button by some of these! Your readers are an absolute hoot! Is it sad that I just want to sit here all day and follow every single one of them for bringing me so much laughter to this situation?

Who cares if Jose’s daddy is a lawyer? He was the one who “replied all” using expletives about a blogger that has like 164k Twitter Followers and told HER that she should be happy to be pitched to. I think he has earned the “PR Idiot of the Year” award.

I bet you have rocked his world all the way to the unemployment office!

@brandlinkjose has just tweeted again
“Happy Friday all. Can’t wait for tonight’s event!! Woohoo”
He has learnt punctuation over-night. Although I really wonder what event he’ll be attending. I also wonder why BrandLink haven’t told him to shut his mouth.

“We will do a better job to research who we are
pitching but maybe you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough
to be pitched at all instead of alienated PR firms and PR people – who are actually
the livelihood of any journalists business.”

” To go out of your way to be snarky and rude is a little inappropriate.” jose interprets it as such because that’s what he is. it’s one of those things that says more abt the person interpreting it than the person it is being said abt.

I’ve been reading the comments on their facebook wall and am disappointed with Carol’s attitude. She’s just going to forgive him because he “is a very well respected publicist and beloved by so many in the media”.

PR really is a joke, anywhere else would fire someone who did what Jose did. I wish I had a Chase account just so I could close it.

OK – I recieved this same pitch yesterday and I RANTED about it to a friend for about an hour – because REALLY? As if there is some connection between education and the ‘A-B-C’s’ on Kourtney Kardashian’s tights?? (because that was the pitch!) I thought about responding or doing a video about it… but then there is YOU – YOU actually did it. I love you. Really. I just ranted to a friend about how absurd it was. Well done. xoxo

*stands up and applauds* Wow. Just, wow. With the unemployment rate as high as it is, I’d think the PR company in question could do a helluva lot better than a narrow-minded, unapologetic, PR NIGHTMARE named Jose. What an asshat. And Jenny? You are fucking amazing. Good for you for sticking to your guns and showing that douchebag who rules the internet!

Latest tweet from @brandlinkjose
People are so bored and silly – it appears my twitter was hacked! Like one of my amazing bosses says “keep calm and carry on!”
What? He is making no sense. ALthough he is still managing to correctly punctuate his tweet. I wonder if he thinks his amazing boss (desperate attempt at sucking up?) coined that phrase. I also wonder if he is setting the stage for his defence “My email was hacked.”

Wow! You and your commenters are handling this so beautifully–the whole PR and rudeness aspect, etc. I am also troubled by the basic lack of command of Standard American English, grammar, and usage in the messages from a PR company. I would not want them to work for me…

My itty bitty comment is going to be all lost in your myriad comments (I’m so impressed; Holy Caw!), but because my tweep in Hong Kong said, “Jayme, you’re gonna love this,” I had to respond and say, “Indeed.”

And, as I was reading and wondering why the firm was being protected, lo, it no longer was. I’m so embarrassed when my “peers” do shit like this. No way are they researching blogger one, and since when is blogger outreach tied to advertising? Baffled? Me, as well.

This type of work is just plain old spam PR and that guy believes journalists rely on that. #Fail

I read your blog all the time (Beyonce brought me in) but never comment. This situation called for feedback. Just wanted to share my comment to the company thru their website. Thanks so much for making another Texas girl’s days a bit brighter. A lot brighter. 🙂

Brandlink:
What the hell? Mistake after mistake after mistake. What the hell were you thinking? You don’t need to kiss ass to smooth this over, you need to seriously reflect and assess where you are emotionally and where you are career-wise. You may be in the wrong business for even thinking some of those things *let alone* putting them in writing and actually *sending*. ‘Flattered you’re even relevant’. Jesus.

I’m not a blogger, but I AM a journalist. And I take great offense to this, in particular:

“… PR firms and PR people – who are actually the livelihood of any journalists business.”

No, Jose. PR folks (while there are a *few* great ones out there) are actually the bane of our existence — especially the ones who think they’re indispensable, who spell common plurals with apostrophes and who omit the apostrophes from possessives (as in “any journalist’s business”).

Even if I wanted to use the drivel from press releases submitted by people like Jose, I have to do way too much editing and cleaning up the copy. And if I sound bitter it’s because Jose gets to sit in a cushy office and draw probably double my salary, yet he’s in the communications business and has a sixth-grade-level writing ability.

People like Jose make me sick and deserve all the pitchforks they have coming.

Latest tweets from @brandlinkjose
To address the situation with @theblogess, who I have appologized to. I am sorry to have made bad judgement and offended her
Or her followers. There is a little more to the story but I do regret it and am sorry. That’s all I can say or do now. Thank you

Jenny, I love that you really, truly have a twitter account @TheBlogess!

I got the same pitch and hit delete. I love her comment about getting more hits. What a load of crock maybe if they promoted bloggers I would have posted but there is no quid pro quo with pitches like that.

My husband & father-in-law are in PR. One’s a PR director for the NEA and one is a business development manager for a union.

The PR world is redic. They are ass kisser & assholes all in one sometimes…. (CAN I PLAY DEVILS ADVOCATE?)

While they should have researched more… Can you look at the perspective that you may have been number 10 that sent them a rude/unsatisfying email and you happened to be the one that got the anger. It’s kinda like telemarketing… Who can be positive after hangup number 10…

Jose might have had a bad day…

ON ANOTHER NOTE….

He kinda won…

You put up what he was hoping to get you to acknowledge… His company, the Kardashian, and pantyhose.

(My husband’s response – OMG, SHE IS MY HERO!!! That was amazing.) He obviously doesn’t defend his field. LOL

Jose just tweeted again and *surprise* has typos! It’s @TheBloggess moron!
“To address the situation with @theblogess, who I have appologized to. I am sorry to have made bad judgement and offended her”

*snerk* I missed this all yesterday, but checked this morning and saw this tweet from them: “Ironic that today would be the day that technology would bite me in the butt, lesson learned. All hail @thebloggess”

What’s kind of hilarious and sort of shocking is his snarky sign off yesterday. After his shameful and ignorant statements were blasted to over 3 million twitter users, he could still seem to care less. And how did you cuss first? Did I miss that memo? And him trying to plead to Wil Wheaton? I’ve come to one conclusion ….PAINT CHIPS …he must have ate a lot of them as a child.

Wow, this sure is a cluster F of a community with literally no one thinking about the consequences of what you’ve posted here (I’m guessing you haven’t either). The fact is that you have over 160k followers on twitter and this firm seems pretty small and unknown.

Now, you started the snark, harmless and funny as it may be, and you received what was supposed to be an internal response about said snark. Do you have any idea what kind of office community they have? I’m sure almost everyone who deals with clients have said these kind of things (probably worse) to coworkers before about them. There’s really no harm in it (reply all button excluded of course) and in fact it can help and office community band together in humorlessly deriding the people that give them work.

Yes you should have let it go and understand this is what teams of employees do (I guess it’s hard to break out of the egocentric universe of you that is blogging for a career). But no, you’ve rallied your entire community against them (unintentional or not) and now good people may have their jobs threatened because I can easily see this PR firm being blacklisted in the community.

“there’s more to the story”
Great thing about this whole blog post…. we see the entire story already. There is NOT more to the story.

“my Twitter was hacked”
Really? Your e-mail, too? I have only one good scenario for why some sixth grader is sitting at your computer hitting Reply All, and it is straight from a Tarantino storyline. Which works here, because what happened is a Twitter massacre. (a Twittercre, but that doesn’t really work)

My client sent this blog post to me this morning. I about spit my coffee out on the screen. WTH? I’ve been doing publicity for 20 years and guess what … “reply all” is very dangerous so don’t be talking smack about anyone — especially bloggers. I had to remind my jounior staffers of this once. Geez. Reminds me of a good PR story I heard once. You’ll love this. So, at a huge PR firm in Cincinnati (that will remain nameless) two married publicists were having an affair. Before email there was just voicemail. (Remember?) So … after a night of hot and heavy petting, the lovers exchanged some illicit voicemails… something like, “Last night was awesome [kissing; heavy breathing sound effects here]. Unfortunately, the lover hit the command button, “Send to entire company.” Needless to say, after that, two divorces took place. I think the lovers are still together, though. Have a great day everyone and I’m going to thank my very cool client for sending this to me today. Hopefully he knows I’m professional enough NOT to send scatological language to my target media contacts. Oh! And publicists out there … get with the times. STOP sending photos at all. Get a freakin’ online press kit so you can link to resources.

My client sent this blog post to me this morning. I about spit my coffee out on the screen. WTH? I’ve been doing publicity for 20 years and guess what … “reply all” is very dangerous so don’t be talking smack about anyone — especially bloggers. I had to remind my junior staffers of this once. Geez. Reminds me of a good PR story I heard once. You’ll love this. So, at a huge PR firm in Cincinnati (that will remain nameless) two married publicists were having an affair. Before email there was just voicemail. (Remember?) So … after a night of hot and heavy petting, the lovers exchanged some illicit voicemails… something like, “Last night was awesome [kissing; heavy breathing sound effects here]. Unfortunately, the lover hit the command button, “Send to entire company.” Needless to say, after that, two divorces took place. I think the lovers are still together, though. Have a great day everyone and I’m going to thank my very cool client for sending this to me today. Hopefully he knows I’m professional enough NOT to send scatological language to my target media contacts. Oh! And publicists out there … get with the times. STOP sending photos at all. Get a freakin’ online press kit so you can link to resources.

sweet sweet baby jesus on a ritz cracker…that was brilliant! I love people who just unilaterally DECIDE they’re going to be in PR (or a singer, or a teacher, or dragon slayer) without ever having any background, education, life calling, skill, or frankly, any goddamn idea what it is they’re doing all day long. Not everyone is cut out to do whatever they THINK they should be doing. Jose, por ejemplo, might reconsider his PR gig and go into accounting or something where he won’t have to deal with humans on a daily basis. Also, there’s probably a lack of fucking bitches in accounting.